Philip Friesen

Mary’s Diary: A Christmas Play for the Advent Season

  Mary’s Diary A Christmas play for the Advent Season   by Philip E. Friesen   The intimate details of Mary’s pregnancy and Jesus birth are narrated in the Gospel of Luke.  It seems most likely that Luke would have interviewed Mary during his two year visit to Palestine in about AD 60 when he accompanied Paul to Jerusalem.   This reading is my attempt to describe what feelings Mary...

Philip Friesen

INTERPRETING JESUS FOR POLITICS AND WAR

Copyright 2015 INTERPRETING JESUS FOR POLITICS AND WAR PRIESTS AND KINGS In an earlier article we noted that the lens through which one views the text limits what one can see in the Biblical text. If we make the cross our lens for looking at history, the cross event informs the past, the present, and even the future so that we can see the whole, though not in detail or perfectly in focus.  The experience...

Philip Friesen

A Modern Myth

There is an economic myth that fierce competition in providing more goods and services at lower cost improves people’s lives. This is a mirage. The reality is that people are assaulted with messages that more stuff for less money is the most important thing in life, and as the Nazis said, if people hear the message often enough, they will believe it. People who theoretically deny they believe this still...

Philip Friesen

PARADISE (March 15 presentation at the Islamic Center of Minnesota)

Paradise, or heaven, is not a physical place, but a state of relationship. THE ORIGINAL PARADISE from Genesis 2. 8 The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge...

Philip Friesen

New Year’s Bus Ride

January 2, 2015 An ad on a bus I rode home today carried this message: It normally takes seven attempts to quit smoking. Don’t give up. You can do it. Why can’t we keep people from starting the tobacco habit? Why don’t we make the sale illegal? The reason we don’t is that prohibition doesn’t work. The prohibition of alcohol resulted in the expansion of criminal activity and the corruption of the...